Multiple signs of inflation in freight-related industries are at or near historical highs, in what could be an early sign that price pressures are building and ready to reverberate around the economy. Freight marketplace DAT keeps track of supply and demand in the freight industry through a bulletin board that matches companies with loads to be delivered to the vehicles that will take the goods to the marketplace. The measures are in the spot market, where vendors that don't contract their deliveries find drivers for their products. Recent readings show demand for vehicles skyrocketing, a sign that generally points to...

Dow Jones futures today rose modestly vs. fair value, along with S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures. President Donald Trump tweeted that it "will all work out" on U.S.-China trade. He also tweeted that he wants to help China's ZTE "get back into business, less than a month after the U.S. banned domestic companies from selling components to the telecom gear giant. That could be good news for U.S. optical stocks such as Oclaro, Finisar, Acacia Communications and Lumentum Holdings which also is an Apple iPhone supplier.

Two weeks ago, I wrote an article explaining why I thought the stock market would have one more major rally before the end of this economic cycle. In that article, I explain that jobless claims are still shrinking, the yield curve is still flattening, and investor sentiment is not euphoric. All of these can be thought of as bullish in the short to medium-term. This week, we continued to get bullish signs (technically and fundamentally) and might be about to go on a quick ride upward. Here is what the stock market looked like two weeks ago: The price was...

I stopped to grab a burger in Marin County today and was kind of shocked to see the following posted on the front door. That is a pretty steep starting wage for nonskilled labor, and $5.00 more than the California minimum wage. In-N-Out does pay their employees well. The private burger chain pays store managers an average yearly salary of more than $160,000 with no college degree or previous management experience required. Facebook engineers soon to be flipping burgers. Nonbinding It is clear the minimum wage in California is nonbinding — that is irrelevant — and all the bluster about...

Goldman Sachs joined a somewhat awkward club Tuesday morning, delivering better-than-expected quarterly earnings only to see its shares sink when the market opened. The Wall Street firm reported earnings of $6.95 per share, compared with analyst expectations of $5.56. This was the third-best earnings-per-share ever for Goldman. Revenue of $10.4 billion topped estimates of 8.54 billion, a 25 percent increase from a year ago. Yet investors were not in the mood to pop champagne corks. Goldman shares fell by 1.6 percent Tuesday morning even as the broader market moved up, with the S&P 500 rising by 1 percent. Year to...

The US tech sector does a great job of exchanging photos and recipes and family photos, but it doesnÂ’t do much for overall productivity, which is stagnant as investment goes into apps rather than plant and equipment. This is how it always happens. Late Tuesday an obscure short-seller, Citron Research, announced that Twitter was the social media platform most vulnerable to privacy regulation Â– and its stock plunged 12% in the course of the day. All the other tech names followed, including the whole of the FANG+ Index (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, along with a half-dozen other big names,...

Stocks in the U.S. are rising Thursday and major indexes in Europe are surging as global markets continue a rally that began late the previous day. Wall Street is getting more optimistic that a trade dispute between the U.S. and China, the two largest economies in the world, will be resolved without too much pain. Some of the biggest gains are going to technology companies, retailers and banks. The S&P 500 index climbed 18 points, or 0.7 percent, to 2,662 as of 12:45 p.m. Eastern time. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 237 points, or 1 percent, to 24,501. It...

U.S. stocks were higher in afternoon trading on Wednesday, with the major indexes recovering from earlier losses as investors’ fears eased over a trade conflict between the United States and China. Beijing hit back against U.S. plans to impose tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods, with proposals for a list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans, planes, cars, beef and chemicals. However, investor concerns appeared to ease after Trump’s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the administration was involved in a “negotiation” with China rather than a trade war. The market also seemed to take comfort...

Trade war fears and a presidential attack on Amazon are rocking Wall Street. The Dow dropped more than 700 points and the Nasdaq plunged 3% on Monday. All three major indexes are now in the red for the year. The sell-off on the first day of the second quarter came after President Trump once again attacked Amazon on Twitter. Amazon (AMZN), one of the biggest drivers of the 2017 market rally, tumbled 5%, wiping out more than $37 billion of its market value. Trump once again accused Amazon of taking advantage of the US Postal Service, and he suggested that...

The highly anticipated yuan-backed crude oil futures have been launched in Shanghai. China is the world’s biggest oil consumer, with eyes on rival benchmarks Brent and WTI as well as the US currency. Trading of the new oil futures contracts for September settlement started on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange at 440.20 yuan ($69.70) per barrel, reports Chinese daily the South China Morning Post. Some 18,540 lots have reportedly been sold and purchased so far. long-awaited step evoked a surge in global prices for oil with Brent Crude soaring to $71 a barrel for the first time since 2015. US...

U.S. economic growth slowed less than previously estimated in the fourth quarter as the biggest gain in consumer spending in three years partially offset the drag from a jump in imports. Gross domestic product expanded at a 2.9 percent annual rate in the final three months of 2017, instead of the previously reported 2.5 percent, the Commerce Department said in its third estimate for the quarter on Wednesday. That was a slight moderation from the third quarter’s brisk 3.2 percent pace. The upward revision to the fourth-quarter growth estimate also reflected less inventory reduction than previously reported. Economists polled by...

Wall Street is shocked, but it shouldn’t be: Tariffs targeting China should have been a given, and now the market’s tanking on trade war fears as if it just crept up on everyone, but Trump’s been very clear on this. Wall Street is known for being short-sighted, though, and allowing itself to get caught up in the euphoria of the day. And now the world’s biggest investors are losing hundreds of billions.

Trade war fears that have roiled the markets for two weeks intensified Thursday, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling more than 700 points and adding to concerns that stocks could be headed for a larger reckoning. Thursday’s selling, which sent shares of manufacturers, aluminum producers and steelmakers sharply lower, marked the culmination of months of growing investor anxiety over the course of U.S. trade policy. It came at a time when many say the market was already under pressure, gripped by fears over rising interest rates and sliding technology shares. Trade tensions ratcheted higher, as the Trump administration said...

Facebook’s mini-crash — the company’s stock is down over 13% in three days — is a reminder that even red-hot FAANG stocks can fall. Facebook FB, -0.08% took the stairs up and the elevator down. Did the Facebook shock just offer a glimpse into stock market future? Read on, and I’ll explain. Mean reversion Let’s not forget that Facebook’s stock is still up 865% since its 2012 low. For most of the past five years, Facebook has been trending higher in a well-defined trend channel. Let’s call this the “mean.” In July 2017, Facebook jumped above the trend channel and...

• Price performance difference between tech and utilities has spread lately to a level nearly as wide as when the dotcom bubble burst. • "The obsession with dot-com stocks in the late-1990s has been replaced today by a fascination with FANG stocks," said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group. Price performance between the two sectors has spread lately to a gap not quite as wide as during the bubble, but close. Using a measure called the "Popular/Panned Ratio", Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group, sees danger signs growing for the bull market that began...

March 14 (Reuters) - The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed more than 250 points on Wednesday as U.S. manufacturers continued to suffer from concerns over the impact of new tariffs on trade. (please see full article at the link)